Trending

INTERVIEW: Showtek at Tomorrowland

by Nicole Mastrogiannis

Dutch duo Showtek, comprised of brothers Sjoerd and Wouter Janssen, has been exploding in the dance music industry over the past year. Once a hardstyle act, the guys have now evolved into a talented powerhouse who have created some of the biggest dance floor bombs in progressive and electro house, supported by the world's top DJs.

With huge successes on the dance charts already, working with guys like Tiesto and Hardwell, Showtek is just getting started. The guys played at Tomorrowland on the Smash The House vs. Dirty Dutch stage - representing the Dutch eminently. The duo played a dynamite set, and had every person who came to see them jumping up and down.

Sjoerd and Wouter had some time to talk, after their set at Tomorrowland, about their new track "Booyah," remixing Carly Rae Jepsen, what is next for them, and more. Check it out below:

How do you think your set went?

I think we had a crazy tour, three weeks of touring, but this party closed out our tour, it was insane. And the people were…after three days and going so crazy, it was unbelievable.

We were in a car on the way here from the airport and we didn’t sleep for five days! We said to each other, no matter what, this is gonna be the last day of Tomorrowland and we’ve never played this stage. We needed to do a really cool set here for all the people from all around the globe because it was insane how many different kinds of cultures were here. I think we really took the maximum out of our set, and every minute the vibe was growing, growing, growing, it was one big, crazy .. we’ve never had this before.

We have to be honest, we came in pretty late cause we had another show, so we only saw part of another stage, I didn’t even see the main stage, only pictures, but as far as I can tell it looks amazing.

If the vibe on main stage is the same as here, then this can be considered the sickest party on earth. It’s crazy.

You guys premiered some new music in your set, right? So tell us about that.

We have a new song called “Booyah” featuring Sonny Wilson and We Are Loud!, and we made this track ... we wanted to do something different every few months, and we were a little bit tired with all the drops. So we wanted to have a melody track, with a really easy melody, not really progressive, more like a horn. And we combined reggae vocals with drum and bass and electro-house, and I think it’s something new. We really appreciate all the response from everybody because it’s going crazy, it’s not even out yet, and people are insane, the response on BBC England, America, it’s amazing.

You know what it is, as an artist you wanna grow and grow, and we are pretty much -not to brag - we are pretty much on a run lately, like it’s going crazy. And we never had this peak in our career ever, so the vibe we have, no matter if we’re in the studio or on stage, it’s growing everyday. So we really have the feeling that we’re going somewhere. So when we did this track we were like, okay, if we do something new and cool it must be different, it cannot be the same. Like there are a lot of good tracks, to separate you from the rest, but you need to do something else, you need to show some balls, you know? So the 160 bpm reggae, drum and bass break and so far, like in England, it’s going crazy, already being played on BBC One and stuff, and the support has never been so big on a track. Ever. It’s crazy.

You guys know there’s a Q Dance stage here, it’s all hardstyle! You guys used to produce a lot of that, what do you think about having a stage dedicated to that type of dance music?

It’s so great you know, I think we actually played here four years ago on the hardstyle stage. It’s so great and for us, it feels like an old relationship. Like you still love it, like your first girlfriend, but you’ve moved on to the next one. And you don’t regret what you did, you just had a great run. I really hope all the hardstyle guys are still loving it, and I wish them all the best really.

It’s like a book, you know. If you have a real cool book, and you read it and you think about it like, "oh maybe I’ll read it or listen to it again," [but] you put it in the closet. So once in a while you open the door and you’re like "oh, I have this cool book," and you still look at it. But we’re reading a new book right now, which is maybe better for us. We never regret what we did, we still love it. But for us it’s a new era.

You guys remixed Carly Rae Jepsen? Are you guys Carly fans?

The funny thing is that we know the guy who wrote the song, he’s a really great friend of ours. He made the original and he was like we should do a crazy remix, and we said, "you know, let’s try it." I don’t think it’s that cheesy, I think we made it as cool as possible!

You know what it is, we changed our genre a little bit, we didn’t change totally in sound, but we changed genres. And the benefits of this decision were like, new doors were opening for us in other cultures and music. Pop music is so totally something different than EDM and the fact that Carly Rae Jepsen is tweeting us like, “Hey guys, I love this mix, love you, big hug,” and stuff, that means a lot to us as a producer as well because we can do stuff that’s, it doesn’t have to be the picture all the time. If you do something like a side project, or like a remix for Carly Rae Jepsen, as a person it means a lot to us. And no matter what the crowd thinks, we don’t give a f**k. Like we love it, and it’s just a way of showing off your music and producing music.

What’s next for you guys? What are you guys up to?

Well, musically wise we have got a lot! We have a new track coming in October with with Ookay, a trap guy. We're also gonna spend a lot more time in the studio because, of course the records they make you big, then you start touring, and then you don’t have time to progress anymore or make some new stuff, which we think is so important. And I’ve noticed in the last ten years some guys didn’t pay enough attention to their music and then slightly they were slipping away. We want to still control our studio careers as well, so we're going to make a lot of new tracks. We have four tracks in the making already which are gonna be really really great. One really progressive track, one really hard "Cannonball" kind of track, the one with Ookay is coming, Booyah is coming next month, it’s exciting, it’s gonna be an exciting year.

Yeah, it’s gonna be amazing. I think we have like this July, August, September, we have 70 shows all around the globe, so we have to travel everyday. The time we miss in the studio, we have to make it up. So there’s gonna be a time this year, or the beginning of next year, where we’re gonna spend a lot of time in the studio focusing on something really big - like next chapter, next chapter. So yeah, enough good positive vibes coming through us.

You guys don’t produce it on the road at all, you just save it for the studio?

Yeah like if you’re on a roll, you know, in our two different lives, but the one cannot go without the other. Like if you don’t perform, you don’t try out your new stuff, you won’t have the calling to produce a new track in the studio. But if you’re just in the studio you know, you’re just a DJ playing some tracks from someone else. And you wanna play your own stuff, if you wanna be original. And that’s something we try to find a balance in, so studio and DJing is both important for us.

While we are in TomorrowLAND, if you had your own land what would you name it?